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.Under hisdirection, Jewish and Russian heads were severed and sent, in hermeticallysealed containers, to a research center to be analyzed for subhuman traits.Just before the end of the war, with the Reich crumbling, Schellenbergarranged a meeting between Himmler and the Swedish Count FolkeBemadotte, to negotiate a surrender.Schellenberg urged his superior not »toexpound his astrological and philosophical theories,« but even at that tensemoment Himmler could not resist putting aside the urgent talk of peace tolecture for an hour on runes.To the discerning eye, he insisted, theuninterrupted script of the Northmen of the Dark Ages resembled Japaneseideograms.This was evidence that the Japanese, too, were Aryans.The image that Himmler apparently had of himself was that of anidealistic man of science.Yet it was a piece of role-playing, and one isnever sure whether he really deceived himself as well as others with it.Asfanatical and earnest as he was in the pursuit of his crazy researches, theywere convenient rationales for his ideology, as they were for Hitler.Theimage of the dispassionate scientific researcher was often distorted.So, forinstance, Hermann Rauschning reports a conversation with Himmler,incensed at the audacity of a professor who dared to criticize the Nazidogma about the origins of the Teutons:What ideas, he said, these gentlemen got into their heads!.if the Stateor the party had declared that a certain view was regarded as the desiredstarting-point for scientific research, that view must be accepted simply asa scientific axiom.»We don't care a hoot whether this or something else was the realtruth about the prehistory of the German tribes [said Himmler].Scienceproceeds from hypotheses that change every year or two.So there's no GODS AND BEASTS90earthly reason why the party should not lay down a particular hypothesis asthe starting-point, even if it runs counter to current scientific opinion.Theone and only thing that matters to us, and the thing these people are paidfor by the State, is to have ideas of history that strengthen our people in theirnecessary national pride.»In all this troublesome business we are only interested in onething to project into the dim and distant past the picture of our nation as weenvisage it for the future.Every bit of Tacitus, in his Germania, istendentious stuff.Our teaching of German origins has depended forcenturies on falsification.We are entitled to impose one of our own.Prehistory is the doctrine of the eminence of the Germans at the dawn ofcivilization.«Himmler's views and deeds were not the excesses of madness, thoughthey were not always rational.They owe more to the dissociations of thefanatical occultist than they do to the divided personality.If he spent much ofhis own time and that of his men in investigating crankish researches, thisdid not diminish his talents for efficient organization.If his reality was non-ordinary, it was not because he was crazy, butrather, as his masseur, Dr.Felix Kersten, tells us, because he was »ex-tremely superstitious.« He believed in »good and evil spirits« and was»always afraid of an invisible power« to which he would »one day have togive an account of himself.« When Dr.Kersten asked him how, with thisview, he could do the things he had to do, believing as he did that according tothe doctrine of karma his deeds would determine his destiny in his nextincarnation, Himmler answered:You oughtn't to look at things from such a limited and egotistical point ofview; you have to consider the Germanic world as a whole which alsohas its Karma.A man has to sacrifice himself, even though it is oftenvery hard for him; he oughtn't to think of himself.Of course it'spleasanter to concern yourself with flower-beds rather than political dust-heaps and refuse-dumps, but flowers themselves won't thrive unless thesethings are seen to.I try to reach a compromise in my own life; I try to helppeople and do good, relieve the oppressed and remove injusticeswherever I can
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